Hawaii’s governor has certainly not gone looking for a fight with West Maui’s short-term rental (STR) owners over Maui fire survivors’ need to secure longterm housing — but an increasingly desperate search for housing near now-incinerated Lahaina homes has pushed the state and Maui County to a breaking point.
Fire evacuees have been sheltered, largely in hotels, since the Aug. 8 inferno devastated Lahaina. Nearly seven months after the disaster, however, the costs of keeping survivors housed in by-the-night shelters are reaching mountainous heights, and threatening to swamp the state’s budget. On Tuesday, Gov. Josh Green said he would “continue to consider” banning STRs if owners of at least 175 West Maui units do not commit to rent to fire survivors by April 1.
The state, federal agencies and a cadre of deputized nonprofits have been scrambling to serve the displaced from the start. But despite increasingly generous offers of reimbursement and full stewardship of properties converted to homes for survivors, hundreds of households remain in hotels, uncertain of their next move — and thousands of STR owners remain unmoved. Opening up a larger share of the existing housing stock to long-term occupancy is an imperative.
The time is ripe for a full-court press to move survivors into erstwhile STRs, both by moving forward with an STR moratorium on Maui, and by working one-on-one to identify and meet the specific needs of every household still in a hotel shelter.
While an emergency STR moratorium could provoke a court challenge, it’s reasonable to expect that a temporary ban would be upheld to serve survivors of the Lahaina disaster, which left more than 100 dead and is the worst wildfire disaster in the last century of U.S. history.
Statewide and municipal emergency orders shut down STR operations during the COVID pandemic. And in September, a Georgia county government passed an “emergency moratorium” on registration of any new STRs in single-family home neighborhoods, citing a housing crisis and problems with noise, traffic and parking.
In Hawaii, in conjunction with stronger emergency measures, it’s also urgent that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) improve channels of communica-
tion with local agencies, so that these entities don’t work at cross-purposes. FEMA expends the lion’s share of hotel reimbursements, and has also upped its offer for monthly reimbursements to property owners who make rentals available to fire survivors — but state agencies have reported that in some cases they find themselves competing with FEMA for units. Closer partnership and better coordination are called for.
Further, FEMA must streamline its efforts. It’s frustrating to hear that the agency is taking weeks and even months to complete housing agreements with displaced households when available units sit empty, and the cost of hotel shelter has been estimated at a headache-inducing $1,000 per day.
A recent search on just one popular online platform for STR units in or near Kaanapali turned up about 300 units available for March, at a total cost ranging from just under $5,000 to upwards of $30,000. It’s clear that STRs in West Maui can be incredibly lucrative. Even so, the state’s offer of $5,000 to $11,000 monthly for rentals to fire survivors, along with property tax waivers, amounts to guaranteed income. That could well give certain STR owners a bump.
On Saturday, the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency is sponsoring a temporary housing resource fair dubbed “Hope for Home,” from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Sheraton Maui Resort. State, federal and local organizations will be there to offer support to displaced households — but the effort cannot be successful without cooperation from STR owners in West Maui.
It’s past time for these owners, who benefit not only from Maui’s beauty, but also from Hawaii’s generous culture, to offer reciprocal generosity and shelter their disaster-displaced neighbors.
